Falling
by Gryph
Summary: Daryl Dixon's world is falling apart. Spoilers up through 3.05 Say the Word.


_Why am I feeling so guilty?  
Why am I holding my breath?  
Worry 'bout everyone but me  
I just keep losing myself_

_~Falling by The Civil Wars_

Daryl Dixon felt like the world was falling out from under his feet, like he was trying to stand on shifting sand. Just this morning, he and his friends had been planning crops to grow on the prison grounds and joking about Maggie and Glenn sneaking off to the guard tower. Now their hard-won safety was gone. Walkers had overrun the prison again, and T-Dog, Carol, and Lori were dead. Everything had gone to hell so very fast.

He snapped his fingers one more time in front of Rick's unresponsive stare, then gave up. In some ways, he envied Rick. What he wouldn't give to just check out for a while, forget the faces of his friends who'd died within the last hour or so.

"Let me see the baby," Hershel called, his face grim. But then again, Hershel's face was always grim these days. Carl carried his baby sister, still wrapped in Maggie's blood-stained shirt, over to the old vet.

Daryl followed. "What are we gonna feed it? We got anything a baby can eat?"

Hershel pulled the shirt back from the baby's face, quickly assessing the red-faced, squalling infant. "The good news is, she looks healthy. But she needs formula." He turned to Daryl. "And soon, or she won't survive."

Daryl slung his crossbow onto his back. "No. No way. Not her. We ain't losin' nobody else."

Not after Carol... He swallowed hard at the thought, trying not to let the others see how shaken he was. Not after he'd found Carol's scarf next to a smear of blood and a dropped gun, only feet from where a couple of walkers had been gorging on T-Dog.

No more. Not today. Not on _his_ watch.

He'd get whatever this baby needed to survive, if he had to kill every walker in three counties to do it.

For Lori.

For Carol.

For... Sophia.

No more. No fucking more.

Carol's voice echoed in his head. _You're every bit as good as them. Every bit. You did more for my little girl today than her own daddy ever did his whole life._

But hadn't been enough. In the end, it hadn't mattered at all. Sophia had gotten bit, and then Carol had had to watch her little girl die all over again.

This baby—this baby was a brand new life, born into a world that wasn't fit to live in. None of them had any guarantee that they were going to see the sun rise tomorrow. Three of his friends who'd been whole and hale this morning wouldn't. But by god, he was going to make sure this little girl got the fighting chance she deserved.

Rick wasn't Ed Peletier by any stretch, but right now, he wasn't in any shape to do right by his new baby girl. Hell, it was a wonder Carl was still upright after watching his mother die giving birth. After he'd had to do—if Rick's knowing look at his son was any indicator—what needed to be done to make sure his mother wouldn't get up again. Kid had seen enough serious fuckery to be screwed up for the rest of his life. However long that may be. _Then again,_ Daryl thought, _what was the worst he could do? Turn into a serial killer? _Hell, he already was one—they all were. And there was no shortage of bodies for him to take out his issues on. As long as he didn't start taking up with the living members of the group, but Daryl didn't really think he would. Kid was too... resilient.

Over the last seven months since Sophia's death, he'd seen that kind of resiliency in Carol. And he and Carol had gotten close. He'd pushed her away at first, tried to make her get angry at him. God knows, she had the right. She should have raged at him, at Rick, at Otis, but instead she's just folded in on herself, pushed all that anger and grief down.

He'd said something to Rick one day at breakfast, how he was worried about Carol because she didn't seem to be grieving. How she hadn't even been willing to attend a funeral for her own daughter. Rick had thought for a moment, then pointed to the pot of water that was boiling on the fire.

"Grief is like that hot water. How you come out of it depends on how you go into it. If you're too fragile, like an egg, you come out of it hardened, not able to feel anything anymore. If you go in stiff and inflexible, like a potato, you come out of it soft and vulnerable, easily squashed by the next thing that hits you. But if you let the grief flow through you, like the hot water flows through this filter," and he dumped a couple of tea bags—a precious find that helped Lori's morning sickness—into the water, "then you transform it. You make it into something that might do somebody some good." He looked Daryl in the eye and gave him a nod. "Not sure yet which one Carol is. But I'd get a mug ready, just in case."

He'd tried to hold Carol at arm's length, partly out of respect for her grief, partly because he didn't believe he deserved... well, anything. Letting people get close only got you hurt, in his experience. But she was relentless.

In the last seven months, she'd become a new thing. Stronger, more confident. Tempered, like the blade of a good knife. And she could be just as dangerous when she needed to be. She'd learned to shoot—now she was their sharpshooter, the one they turned to when they needed someone with nerves of solid steel behind the trigger. She'd learned to doctor, helping Hershel when it was needed. She'd even come hunting with him a few times and hadn't batted an eye at pulling out squirrel guts or inspecting animal droppings to track.

But she hadn't become hardened, unfeeling. She spoke quiet words of encouragement, made sure he knew she thought more of him than less. He didn't even flinch away from her small touches anymore; she'd always put a hand on his shoulder to get his attention, or on his back to let her know she was there while they were tracking. On cold nights, she would sit between his legs and lean back against him, wrapping the old horse blanket he'd turned into a poncho around them both—not caring that it still smelled of horse.

He'd been falling for her, even when every instinct had screamed at him not to let her inside.

Daryl shook his head, trying to clear away the gathering mist those memories brought. He needed to take charge; he was Rick's wingman now. The irony was that Rick, despite his sage words about dealing with grief, was now sitting catatonic in the middle of a prison yard full of walker bodies. Maybe he was a potato after all.

* * *

As he and Maggie rode his bike on a run for baby supplies, he was very aware of Maggie's body pressed against his back and her hands gripping his hips. Not that he was interested—she was Glenn's woman, and he respected that—but because right now, everything... He swallowed past the sudden constriction in his throat. How had he let Carol get so tangled up in his life?

He thought back to that morning again, and Rick's pot of boiling water. He was determined to turn these feelings into something useful. To continue to become the worthwhile person Carol had always believed he already was.

They hit up the daycare center because Maggie had been watching the supermarkets they'd visited and known they were already picked clean. The payoff had been worth it. Diapers, formula, clothes. They grabbed everything they could fit in their bags. He even grabbed one of those little papoose things that mothers used to strap a baby to their chests. Figured it might come in handy when you might need your hands free to fight off walkers.

He eyed the cribs and couldn't help but wonder what happened to the babies that had last occupied them.

They roared back into the prison after dark, to the sounds of gunfire as Glenn cleared the road for them from the guard tower. As soon as they were inside the gate, he jammed down the kickstand and cut the engine. They both ran inside.

_Please, don't let us be too late._ The thought repeated in his head like a mantra.

He jumped down the last few stairs, shucking off his poncho and crossbow as he crossed to where Carl was trying to soothe the screaming bundle in his arms. He gathered the baby into the crook of his arm and started swaying slightly back and forth, shushing gently. A moment later, he held out a hand to Beth, and she passed him a bottle full of formula. He pressed it to the baby's lips, willing her to take it. He'd heard about babies who wouldn't take a bottle. He hoped for her sake that this kid didn't turn out to be a picky eater. They didn't have too many alternatives.

The baby poked a tiny pink tongue out to touch the tip of the bottle's nipple, then opened her mouth far enough for him to slip it inside. She latched on and started sucking in earnest, her cheeks moving as she pulled in the formula and swallowed.

Daryl looked up, suddenly aware that everyone had grown quiet and still, the entire group holding its collective breath. And they were all staring at him.

As he continued to shuffle from foot to foot to rock the baby, he let out a nervous chuckle and received small, sad smiles in return. The only noise was the loud sucking and swallowing as the baby ate.

Carl watched him with glistening, red-rimmed eyes from under the brim of his daddy's oversized sheriff's hat. Daryl nodded at him. "She got a name yet?"

"N-Not yet," the boy stammered. "I was thinkin', maybe Sophia? There's Carol, too."

_Oh god._ Daryl felt his expression shutter over at the suggestion. The wounds inside him burned like someone had poured high-test moonshine into them. But the boy was just trying to honor Sophia and Carol's memories in the only way he knew how.

"Andrea. Amy. Jacqui. Patricia." He paused between each one, given each her due. "Or...or Lori. I don't know." Carl's voice broke and he turned away to hide his face.

"Yeah, you like that?" Daryl asked the baby as she wolfed down the formula. "Huh, little ass-kicker?"

Carl turned back to him with a smirk, and the rest of the group joined in, the tension broken for a moment.

"That's a good name," Glenn called.

"Little Ass-Kicker? You like that, huh?" Daryl cooed at the baby, who was oblivious to the perils of the world around her. Suddenly she opened her eyes and fixed on his face. He felt himself falling into those trusting pools of blue.

He would make sure she grew into the name.

* * *

The next morning, the sun had barely risen over the horizon; the trees around the prison grounds threw long shadows across the grass. His crossbow slung over his shoulder, Daryl walked across the long stretch of open ground, hopped over the gulch next to the gravel road. His own shadow reached out far in front of him.

He came to the three makeshift crosses stuck into the ground, pieces of a wooden pallet they had found and lashed together with twine. The dirt in front of them was overturned, a dark stain in the sea of grass. The only one that held a body—well, what was left of the body—was the center one, where they'd buried T-Dog.

Each had a set of stones forming a letter in the dirt. He stopped in front of the one on the right. Reaching into his vest, he pulled out a slightly crushed white flower. He'd found the Cherokee Rose in the forest while he'd been out hunting in the pre-dawn.

He knelt down in the soft dirt and brushed this thumb over the petals the flower as it rested in his palm. The sweet fragrance drifted toward him.

_Aw hell, Carol. I wish... I wish we'd had more time. I wish I hadn't been so fucking afraid. I wish I'd tumbled you one of those times you'd make a backhanded offer. _

_I'm sorry for Sophia, and I'm sorry for not being there when you and T-Dog got trapped. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm just so fucking sorry!_

_I'm sorry I didn't let myself fall, because I couldn't trust enough that you would be there to catch me._

His eyes burned as the flower wavered and swam. He placed it in the center of the crescent of stones and gently pushed the dirt in around it to hold it in place. Maybe if he was lucky, the seeds would take root after the flower decayed.

He ran a hand over the cracked piece of wood lashed to the upright of the cross. One final caress, to try to make up for all the ones he'd denied himself before.

One final goodbye.

Then he turned to head back into the prison.

Little Ass-Kicker would be waking soon for her morning bottle.


End file.
